FUNERA INTERVIEW

TRAUMA OF FUNERA

1) When did your band start & why?
Trauma-Well I started the project back in 2006 as a melodic black metal outfit after the disbanding of my band. I wanted to continue using those songs but eventually it ended up being an entity of it's own. For a while I had the whole blackened funeral doom/noise sound nailed down as evident on the first demo. I consider it my failed material actually. I decided to stop and experiment more with dark ambient, noise, death industrial and power electronics to try and further dissociate myself from the depressive black metal scene. (a lot of ex members are involved in some bands in that field-Black Hate, Deep-pression, ..., ect)

2) What style of music are you going for and what do you want the listeners to get out of it?
I try to go for a different sound with each release while maintaining the same basic principle. Dissonance. I will go
from avant-gare black metal to noise, to death industrial and power electronics. As long as it's dark, gritty and atmospheric, the sky is the limit. The first demo which was blackened funeral doom with some subtle noise elements. It is heavily associated with the DSBM scene due to the vocal stylngs and the lyrical
themes at the time but rest assured it does not represent the present and future incarnation/s of the project.

There is no ideology behind this project, I just want to show the listener a heavily industrialized world filled with rust, ruin and decay.

3)How does the recording process work for you?
It depends on the writing process but I usually record it through my 150 watt line 6 spider 3 plugged directly into my computer for the guitars, I will also go out and do some feild recordings
of different machinery and sounds and add them to the guitars. The music is actually 95 percent effects (At least with some tracks). I'll tweek the settings and EQ to my liking, and add any
samples if I have any. I may spend hours upon hours writing, or just spend a couple of hours manipulating field recordings.

4)What do you think of the "Underground" scene today?
What is there to say really? A lot of it speaks for itself.

There's many talented bands in the underground, any genre but it's also filled with a ton of shit bands, and sites like Myspace only serve to encourage the latter side of the spectrum and make it harder to find bands on the former side. But when you stumble upon something great, those bands just seem that much better. Who knows, maybe I belong to the latter as well, but what counts is I'm actually willing to try something different, and whether I'm satisfied with it or not. But fuck it, you do what you can right?

5)What bands influence you?
I could go on for ages, and I would like to include my other inflences, not just bands if I may. I'll start with bands, The most obvious one would be Merzbow, the influence is exponentially apparent right from the get go as soon as you hear the stuff i'm working on right now. The Axis Of Perdition and Blut Aus Nord
(The Work.../Thematic Emanation/MoRT/Odinist era) are some of my most important influences. Other influences include-The Melvins, Swans, early Godflesh, Brighter Death Now, Akira Yamaoka, Lustmord, Leviathan, and Reverence.

I'm also heavily influenced by the Silent Hill series, and have an avid interest in urban exploration too. I fucking love exploring abandoned places. I'm heavily into occult imagery, not neccesarily
in the black metal sense, but like cult brainwashing practices and recruitment tactics and stuff like that.

I'm huge into a lot of dark surrealist imagery and art too, which is where my interest in Silent Hill comes in, Masahiro Ito is one of my favorite artists ever, along with the likes of Francis Bacon, Giorgio DeChirico, and others like that.

6)Are you on a label, and what do you plan to release? or self release?
Not on a label currently but that could possibly change soon. I usually have my stuff up for download but i'm considering releasing it on physical format as well once I get these demos finished. Or perhaps release the upcoming demos on physical format. Who knows.

I deleted the myspace due to that batfucker Tom making it damn near unusable, I'll have a few more pages up and am planning on
creating an official webpage on Wordpress to add any news easier, with links to the bandcamp/reverbnation/soundclick/ whatever else I decide to use. This will make everything much easier.

7)What ticks you off about bands today?
This is all stuff that really shouldn't bug me, but does

To start- 0 integrity, There's so many bands out there that have made their fortune off of other's blood, sweat and tears. For example, i'm about to sling some mud here, but this one band that I know. Abandon All Ships, they sold their souls for cheap hoping to bait some high payers. I know a few members of that band from a few other bands they were in, and they were entirely different people before they joined the band. Their success is nothing but
playing the right style at the right time, for the right people. I guarantee you in a few years they will be less than nothing and all their partying, drinking, and fucking underaged fan-girls will have gone completely in vain and they will have absolutely nothing to show for it. The whole "crabcore" trend is already starting to give way to all those bands ripping off Meshuggah (and quite horrible at that, Meshuggah did it first, and best)

Next, this whole trend going on lately of accusing everything of being "hipster music". I never got that, I can understand completely if you spot a band that's playing that style of music for the completely wrong reasons, but this accusation is thrown around so much that it's almost lost all meaning. And furthermore, why would you give 3 swimming shits about 2 flying fucks?

Also all the fucking suicidal/depressive bands broadcasting their "hate and negativity" over the worldwide webernet machine. The entire genre is nothing but a giant facade, and it has to come down sometime. I do not know of one worthwhile project that has ever called themselves such a thing. It's ust as transparent as all the 14-17 year olds saying their satanists/pagans and hopping off the bandwagon after they realized that it was all in their heads...
8)How many people know of your music and how has the fan reaction been so far?
I'm not exactly sure how many, but when I released the first demo in 2007 reactions were almost universally positive to my surprise. I hope this continues with the newer mateiral, but at the same time it's not really my top priority either.

9)How long have you been making music for, and what instruments do you play?
My first instrument was the drums when I was anout 11, I started playing guitar when I was 12, guitar is my main instrument. I also play a lot of shred stuff when I'm not fucking around with this project. Not exactly like happy go-lucky Yngwie Malmsteen type stuff, but Jeff Loomis, that guy's fucking sick. I'm not a huge fan of Nevermore but I dig the shit out of his solo album. I'm a bit of a techy guitar player at heart.

10)What does Funera mean to you, and where did your band name come about? is their a meaning behind it?
Well not exactly, back about 4 years ago, I got the name from this one misspelling of a song by Dead's old band, Morbid (Winds of Funera), and it just kind of stuck.

11)If you were to define your band in 3 words, what would they be?
Extreme industrial monotony...

12)I am glad to have interviewed you, and what do you have to say to the people reading this now, and where they should get a hold of you for your music, and any last words? Thanks for your time! -D
Thanks for taking the time to interview me, much appreciated, and i'll have the wordpress blog up with my email adress to contact me specifically for matters related to the project in the next month or so, and I hope to be contributing to an upcoming compilation on Sheevra Records which will be Funera's first appearance on a physical format. And all i've got left to say is that anything Mayhem recorded after Pure Fucking Armageddon is hipster bullshit...